Contents

Ben Okri is a member of the Urhobo people; his father was Urhobo, and his mother was half-Igbo.[1] He was born in Minna in west central Nigeria to Grace and Silver Okri in 1959.[5] His father, Silver, moved his family to London when Okri was less than two years old[3] so that Silver could study law.[6] Okri thus spent his earliest years in London and attended primary school in Peckham.[2] In 1968 Silver moved his family back to Nigeria where he practised law in Lagos, providing free or discounted services for those who could not afford it.[5] His exposure to the Nigerian civil war[7] and a culture in which his peers at the time claimed to have seen visions of spirits,[3] later provided inspiration for Okri's fiction.

At the age of 14, after being rejected for admission to a short university program in physics because of his youth and lack of qualifications, Okri experienced a revelation that poetry was his chosen calling.[8] He began writing articles on social and political issues, but these never found a publisher.[8] He then wrote short stories based on those articles, and some were published in women's journals and evening papers.[8] Okri claimed that his criticism of the government in some of this early work led to his name being placed on a death list, and necessitated his departure from the country.[3] In 1978, Okri moved back to England and went to study comparative literature at Essex University with a grant from the Nigerian government.[9][8] When funding for his scholarship fell through, however, Okri found himself homeless, sometimes living in parks and sometimes with friends. He describes this period as "very, very important" to his work: "I wrote and wrote in that period... If anything [the desire to write] actually intensified."[8]

Okri's success as a writer began when he published his first novel Flowers and Shadows, at the age of 21.[1] He then served West Africa magazine as poetry editor from 1983 to 1986, and was a regular contributor to the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985, continuing to publish throughout this period.[1]

For three years from 1988, he lived in a Notting Hill flat (rented from publisher friend Margaret Busby): "I brought the first draft of The Famished Road with me and that flat was where I began rewriting it.... Something about my writing changed round about that time. I acquired a kind of tranquillity. I had been striving for something in my tone of voice as a writer — it was there that it finally came together.... That flat is also where I wrote the short stories that became Stars of the New Curfew."[10][9]

His reputation as an author was secured when his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991,[1][11] making him the youngest ever winner of the prize.[12]

Since he published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows (1980), Okri has risen to an international acclaim, and he often is described as one of Africa's leading writers.[2][3] His best known work, The Famished Road, which was awarded the 1991 Booker Prize, along with Songs of Enchantment and Infinite Riches make up a trilogy that follows the life of Azaro, a spirit-child narrator, through the social and political turmoil of an African nation reminiscent of Okri's remembrance of war-torn Nigeria.[1]

Okri's work is particularly difficult to categorise. Although it has been widely categorised as post-modern,[13] some scholars have noted that the seeming realism with which he depicts the spirit-world challenges this categorisation. If Okri does attribute reality to a spiritual world, it is claimed, then his "allegiances are not postmodern [because] he still believes that there is something ahistorical or transcendental conferring legitimacy on some, and not other, truth-claims."[13] Alternative characterisations of Okri's work suggest an allegiance to Yoruba folklore,[14]New Ageism,[13][15] spiritual realism,[15]magical realism,[16] visionary materialism,[16] and existentialism.[17]

Against these analyses, Okri has always rejected the categorisation of his work as magical realism, claiming that this categorisation is the result of laziness on the part of critics and likening this categorisation to the observation that "a horse ... has four legs and a tail. That doesn't describe it."[3] He has instead described his fiction as obeying a kind of "dream logic,"[7] and stated that his fiction often is preoccupied with the "philosophical conundrum ... what is reality?"[8] insisting that:

"I grew up in a tradition where there are simply more dimensions to reality: legends and myths and ancestors and spirits and death ... Which brings the question: what is reality? Everyone's reality is different. For different perceptions of reality we need a different language. We like to think that the world is rational and precise and exactly how we see it, but something erupts in our reality which makes us sense that there's more to the fabric of life. I'm fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality."[7]

He notes the effect of personal choices, "Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world."[18]

Okri's short fiction has been described as more realistic and less fantastic than his novels, but these stories also depict Africans in communion with spirits,[1] while his poetry and nonfiction have a more overt political tone, focusing on the potential of Africa and the world to overcome the problems of modernity.[1][19]

Okri also was influenced by the oral tradition of his people, and particularly, his mother's storytelling: "If my mother wanted to make a point, she wouldn't correct me, she'd tell me a story."[7] His first-hand experiences of civil war in Nigeria are said to have inspired many of his works.[7]

1.
Order of the British Empire
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There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were at first made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire, nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most members are citizens of the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth realms that use the Imperial system of honours and awards. Honorary knighthoods are appointed to citizens of nations where the Queen is not head of state, occasionally, honorary appointees are, incorrectly, referred to as Sir or Dame – Bill Gates or Bob Geldof, for example. In particular, King George V wished to create an Order to honour many thousands of those who had served in a variety of non-combatant roles during the First World War, when first established, the Order had only one division. However, in 1918, soon after its foundation, it was divided into Military. The Orders motto is For God and the Empire, at the foundation of the Order, the Medal of the Order of the British Empire was instituted, to serve as a lower award granting recipients affiliation but not membership. In 1922, this was renamed the British Empire Medal, in addition, the BEM is awarded by the Cook Islands and by some other Commonwealth nations. The British monarch is Sovereign of the Order, and appoints all members of the Order. The next most senior member is the Grand Master, of whom there have been three, Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, Queen Mary, and the current Grand Master, the Duke of Edinburgh. The Order is limited to 300 Knights and Dames Grand Cross,845 Knights and Dames Commander, and 8,960 Commanders. There are no limits applied to the number of members of the fourth and fifth classes. Foreign recipients, as members, do not contribute to the numbers restricted to the Order as full members do. Though men can be knighted separately from an order of chivalry, women cannot, and so the rank of Knight/Dame Commander of the Order is the lowest rank of damehood, and second-lowest of knighthood. Because of this, Dame Commander is awarded in circumstances in which a man would be created a Knight Bachelor, for example, by convention, female judges of the High Court of Justice are created Dames Commander after appointment, while male judges become Knights Bachelor. The Order has six officials, the Prelate, the Dean, the Secretary, the Registrar, the King of Arms, the Bishop of London, a senior bishop in the Church of England, serves as the Orders Prelate. The Dean of St Pauls is ex officio the Dean of the Order, the Orders King of Arms is not a member of the College of Arms, as are many other heraldic officers. From time to time, individuals are appointed to a higher grade within the Order, thereby ceasing usage of the junior post-nominal letters

2.
Salman Rushdie
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Sir Ahmad Salman Rushdie, FRSL is a British Indian novelist and essayist. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent and he combines magical realism with historical fiction, his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations. His epic fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, was the subject of a major controversy, death threats were made against him, including a fatwā calling for his assassination issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989. The British government put Rushdie under police protection, in 1983 Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the UKs senior literary organisation. He was appointed Commandeur de lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999, in June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945, since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015, earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in 2012, he published Joseph Anton, A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the controversy over The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was strongly favoured to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature but the Nobel organisers were later quoted as saying that they would have been too predictable, Rushdie was born in Bombay, then British India, into a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent. He is the son of Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a Cambridge-educated lawyer-turned-businessman, and Negin Bhatt and he wrote in his 2012 memoir that his father adopted the name Rushdie in honour of Averroes. He was educated at Cathedral and John Connon School in Bombay, Rugby School in Warwickshire, and Kings College, University of Cambridge and his father Anis Rushdie was rusticated from the Indian Civil Service after the British government found out that he had changed his date of birth. Collaborating with the musician Ronnie Bond, Rushdie wrote the words for a record on behalf of the now defunct Burnley Building Society which was recorded at Good Earth Studios. The song was called The Best Dreams and was sung by George Chandler and it was while he was at Ogilvy that he wrote Midnights Children, before becoming a full-time writer. Rushdies first novel, Grimus, a fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public. His next novel, Midnights Children, catapulted him to literary notability and this work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie, in that sense, I’ve never felt that I’ve written an autobiographical character. After Midnights Children, Rushdie wrote Shame, in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Shame won Frances Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of literature are characterised by a style of magic realism

3.
Urhobo people
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The Urhobos are people of southern Nigeria, near the northwestern Niger delta. The Urhobo is the ethnic group in Delta State. Delta State is one of the 36 states of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Urhobos speak the Urhobo language. The Urhobo culture is related to cultures in the Niger-Delta. Isoko is closely related in language and culture, leading to the missionaries erroneously labelling the Urhobo and this name was strongly rejected by both tribes. However, there are those of the opinion that Isoko is a dialect of Urhobo, the Urhobo nation is made up of twenty four sub-groups, including Okpe the largest of all Urhobo sub-groups. Isoko used to be regarded as a part of Urhobo nation until the late 1950s when they were granted autonomy, there are about two million Urhobos. The word Urhobo refer to a group of people and not the geographical territory, the Urhobos have social and cultural affinity to the Edo speaking people of Nigeria. The Urhobo now live in a territory bounded by latitudes 6°and 5°, 15° North and Longitudes 5°, 40° and 6°, 25° East in the Delta State and Bayelsa State of Nigeria. Their neighbours are the Isoko to the South East, the Itsekiri to the West, the Urhobo territory consist of evergreen forest with many oil palm trees which provide the lucrative palm produce industry for which the Urhobo have some technological preserve. The territory is covered by a network of streams whose volumes of water and flow are directly concerned with the season, wet season. The Urhobos are currently organized as kingdoms, gerontocracy and plutocracies. Although it is not clear which kingship is older among the kingdoms, Urhobo politics and government structure occur at two levels kingdom level town level. Men and women of Urhobo heritage are organized either by elders based on the system and or based on rich. An outline of Urhobo indigenous government and politics have the titles and he is the symbol of his kingdoms, culture and also of his royal predecessors. His Councillors are called Otota, Ohoveworen or Okakoro, addressed collectively as Ilorogun, other title holders are the executioners and warriors called Ogbu. Historically, this region was the most pristine in all of Africa, until the Portuguese burst into its territories in the late fifteenth century, its forest peoples cultivated their own forms of civilization, untouched by outside influences. A bulk of the Urhobo people reside in the South Western states of Delta, ofoni is an Urhobo community in Sagbama Local Government Area in Bayelsa State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

4.
Igbo people
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The Igbo people, also erroneously known as the Ibo people, are an indigenous linguistic and cultural people of southern Nigeria. Geographically, the Igbo homeland is divided into two sections by the Niger River – an eastern and a western section. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects, the Igbo homeland is almost surrounded on all sides by other ethnic peoples of southern and central Nigeria namely, the Ijaw, Edo, Isoko, Ogoni, Igala, Tiv, Yako, Idoma and Ibibio. The Igbo people are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, in rural Nigeria, Igbo people work mostly as craftsmen, farmers and traders. The most important crop is the yam, celebrations take place annually to celebrate its harvesting, other staple crops include cassava and taro. Before British colonial rule, the Igbo were a politically fragmented group, there were variations in culture such as in art styles, attire and religious practices. Various subgroups were organized by clan, lineage, village affiliation, there were not many centralized chiefdoms, hereditary aristocracy, or kingship customs except in kingdoms such as those of the Nri, Arochukwu, Agbor and Onitsha. This political system changed significantly under British colonialism in the early 20th century, the Igbo became overwhelmingly Christian under colonization. Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart is one of the most popular novels to depict Igbo culture, by the mid-20th century, the Igbo people developed a strong sense of ethnic identity. Certain conflicts with other Nigerian ethnicities led to Igbo-densely populated Eastern Nigeria seceding to create the independent state of Biafra, the Nigerian Civil War or the Nigerian-Biafran War broke out shortly after. With their defeat, the Republic of Biafra once again was part of Nigeria, MASSOB, a sectarian organization formed in 1999, continues a non-violent struggle for an independent Igbo state. Due to the effects of migration and the Atlantic slave trade, there are descendant ethnic Igbo populations in such as Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. Their exact population outside Africa is unknown, but today many African Americans, according to Liberian historians the fifth president of Liberia Edward James Roye was of Igbo descent. The Igbo people have had fragmented and politically independent communities, before knowledge of Europeans and full exposure to other neighbouring ethnic groups, the Igbo did not have a strong identity as one people. As in the case of most ethnic groups, the British, Chinua Achebe, among other scholars, challenged this because of its negative connotations and possible wrong definition. He suggested defining the Igbo people as a nation although the Igbo do not have an officially recognized state of their own. The most common name for the Igbo in English was formerly Ibo and they have also been known as the Iboe, Ebo, Eboe, Eboans, or Heebo. Their territory and main settlement have also been known by their name

5.
Peckham
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Peckham is a district of south-east London, England,3.5 miles south-east of Charing Cross. At the 2001 Census the Peckham ward of the London Borough of Southwark had a population of 11,381. Peckham was originally part of the parish of Camberwell, which became the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell, and also included Camberwell, Dulwich, Nunhead. Peckham is a Saxon place name meaning the village of the River Peck, archaeological evidence indicates earlier Roman occupation in the area, although the name of this settlement is lost. Peckham appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Pecheham and it was held by the Bishop of Lisieux from Odo of Bayeux. Its Domesday assets were,2 hides and it had land for 1 plough,2 acres of meadow. The manor was owned by King Henry I, who gave it to his son Robert, when Robert married the heiress to Camberwell the two manors were united under royal ownership. King John probably hunted at Peckham and local anecdotes suggest that the right to a fair was granted to celebrate a particularly good days sport. The fair grew to be a major event lasting three weeks until its abolition in 1827. Peckham became popular as a residential area by the 16th century. By the 18th century the area was a commercial centre. Peckham also boasted extensive market gardens and orchards growing produce for the markets of London. Local produce included melons, figs and grapes, the formal gardens of the Peckham Manor House, rebuilt in 1672 by Sir Thomas Bond were particularly noticeable and can be seen on the Rocque map of 1746. The manor house was sacked in 1688, as its then owner Sir Henry Bond was a Roman Catholic, the house was finally demolished in 1797 for the formation of Peckham Hill Street, as the Shard family developed the area. Today Shards Terrace, the block that contains Manzes Pie and Mash shop, the village was the last stopping point for many cattle drovers taking their livestock for sale in London. The drovers stayed in the local inns while the cattle were safely secured overnight in holding pens, most of the villagers were agricultural or horticultural workers but with the early growth of the suburbs an increasing number worked in the brick industry that exploited the local London Clay. In 1767 William Blake visited Peckham Rye and had a vision of an angel in a tree, in 1993, at the request of the Dulwich Festival, artist Stan Peskett painted a mural of Blakes vision next to the Goose Green playground in East Dulwich. At the beginning of the 19th century, Peckham was a small, quiet, since 1744 stagecoaches had travelled with an armed guard between Peckham and London to give protection from highwaymen

6.
Lagos
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Lagos /ˈleɪɡɒs/ is a city in the Nigerian state of Lagos. The city, with its conurbation, is the largest in Nigeria. It is one of the fastest growing in the world, Lagos is a major financial centre in Africa, the megacity has the highest GDP, and also houses one of the largest and busiest ports on the continent. Due to rapid urbanization, the city expanded to the west of the lagoon to include areas in the present day Lagos Mainland, Ajeromi-Ifelodun and Surulere. This led to the classification of Lagos into two main areas - the Island, which was the city of Lagos, before it expanded into the area known as the Mainland. Lagos, the capital of Nigeria since its amalgamation in 1914, however, the state capital was later moved to Ikeja in 1976, while the federal capital also moved to Abuja in 1991. This conurbation makes up 37% of Lagos States total land area, the exact population of Metropolitan Lagos is disputed, In the 2006 federal census data, the conurbation had a population of about 8 million people. However, the figure was disputed by the Lagos State Government, Lagos was originally inhabited by the Awori subgroup of the Yoruba people in the 15th century, who called it Oko. Under the leadership of the Oloye Olofin, the Awori moved to an island now called Iddo and then to the larger Lagos Island. In the 16th century, the Awori settlement was conquered by the Benin Empire and the became a Benin war-camp called Eko under Oba Orhogba. Eko is still the name for Lagos. Lagos, which means lakes, was a given to the settlement by the Portuguese. The present-day Lagos state has a percentage of Awori, who migrated to the area from Isheri along the Ogun river. Throughout history, it was home to a number of warring ethnic groups who had settled in the area. Following its early settlement by the Awori nobility, and its conquest by the Bini warlords of Benin, Portuguese explorer Rui de Sequeira visited the area in 1472, naming the area around the city Lago de Curamo. Another explanation is that Lagos was named for Lagos, Portugal—a maritime town which, in 1849, Britain appointed John Beecroft Consul of the Bights of Benin and Biafra, a position he held until his death in 1854. John Duncan was appointed Vice Consul and was located at Wydah, at the time of Beecrofts appointment, the Kingdom of Lagos was in the western part of the Consulate of the Bights of Benin and Biafra and was a key slave trading port. Oba Akitoye then signed the Treaty between Great Britain and Lagos abolishing slavery, the signing of the 1852 treaty ushered in the Consular Period in Lagos history wherein Britain provided military protection to Lagos

7.
University of Essex
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The University of Essex is a public research university in Colchester, Essex, England. It was established in 1963 and received its Royal Charter in 1965, the universitys largest campus is located within Wivenhoe Park in the English county of Essex, less than a mile from the town of Wivenhoe and two miles from the town of Colchester. Apart from the Wivenhoe Park campus, there is a rapidly developing campus in Southend-on-Sea, the universitys motto, Thought the harder, heart the keener, is adapted from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon. The university enjoys collaborative partnerships with a number of institutions across the eastern region and these are University Campus Suffolk, Colchester Institute, Kaplan Open Learning, South Essex College and Writtle College. The university exhibits an international character with 132 countries represented in its student body, the Research Excellence Framework in 2014 ranked Essex in the top 20 universities in the UK for the quality of its research and the top 5 for social science. The QS statistics ranked Essex the 5th most international university in the UK for staff, in July 1959, Essex County Council accepted a proposal from Alderman Leatherland that a university be established in the county. In July 1962, Albert Sloman, Gilmour Professor of Spanish and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Liverpool, was appointed as Vice-Chancellor, hon. R. A. Butler, was invited to be Chancellor, with Anthony Rowland-Jones appointed as Registrar. With its first staff appointed, a development plan for the university was published, within six months the Appeal Fund had exceeded its £1million target with The Queen Mother and Sir Winston Churchill among contributors, while work began on clearing the site for building work. Two months later the universitys Armorial Bearings were published, with the motto Thought the harder, in October 1964, the first 122 students arrived with 28 teaching staff in three schools, Comparative Studies, Physical Sciences and Social Studies. Work started on the first residential tower, Rayleigh, in December with The Queen approving the grant of Charter to take effect from 11 January 1965. 1965 brought 399 students enrolling for the start of the new year, the number of academic staff more than doubled to 61. The Physics building opened and the first six floors of Rayleigh tower were ready for occupation, the first female lecturer was appointed, Dorothy E. Smith in the Department of Sociology. In December, University Court met for the first time with around 500 members, six months later, work started on the Lecture Theatre Building, plus the Topping out of Keynes tower. In October 1966, the Hexagon Restaurant and General Store opened, the University of Essex was at the forefront of 1960s student unrest. At a time of worldwide protest against the Vietnam War, the student movement was taking off all over the world, in March 1968, a demonstration against a visit to the University by Enoch Powell received national publicity. Seven students were summoned to disciplinary hearings but student sit-ins prevented these hearings taking place, on Tuesday,7 May 1968, Dr Thomas Inch from Porton Down came to give a lecture at the university. In a carefully planned demonstration, an indictment was read out as Inch attempted to speak, University authorities called in police with dogs, probably for the first time in an English university. Students outnumbered police and managed to prevent arrests, on Friday,10 May, three students, Pete Archard, Raphael Halberstadt and David Triesman were suspended and ordered off the campus

8.
Notting Hill
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Notting Hill is an affluent district in West London, located north of Kensington within the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea as well as Westminster. Notting Hill is known for being a neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival. For much of the 20th century, the houses were subdivided into multi-occupancy rentals. Since it was first developed in the 1820s, Notting Hill has had an association with artists, the area in the west around Pottery Lane was used in the early 19th century for making bricks and tiles out of the heavy clay dug in the area. The clay was shaped and fired in a series of brick, the only remaining 19th-century tile kiln in London is on Walmer Road. In the same area, pig farmers moved in after being forced out of the Marble Arch area, avondale Park was created in 1892 out of a former area of pig slurry called the Ocean. This was part of a general clean-up of the area which had known as the Potteries and Piggeries. The area remained rural until the expansion of London reached Bayswater in the early 19th century. The main landowner in Notting Hill was the Ladbroke family, working with the architect and surveyor Thomas Allason, Ladbroke began to lay out streets and houses, with a view to turning the area into a fashionable suburb of the capital. Many of these bear the Ladbroke name, including Ladbroke Grove, the main north-south axis of the area, and Ladbroke Square. The original idea was to call the district Kensington Park, the local telephone prefix 7727 is based on the old telephone exchange name of PARk. Ladbroke left the business of developing his land to the firm of City solicitors, Smith, Bayley. In 1823 Allason completed a plan for the layout of the portion of the estate. This marks the genesis of his most enduring idea – the creation of large communal gardens, originally known as pleasure grounds, or paddocks. To this day these communal garden squares continue to provide the area much of its attraction for the wealthiest householders. In 1837 the Hippodrome racecourse was laid out, the racecourse ran around the hill, and bystanders were expected to watch from the summit of the hill. However, the venture was not a success, in due to a public right of way which traversed the course. The Hippodrome closed in 1841, after which development resumed and houses were built on the site, at the summit of hill stands the elegant St Johns church, built in 1845 in the early English style, and which formed the centrepiece of the Ladbroke Estate development

9.
Memorial Gates, London
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The Memorial Gates are a war memorial located at the Hyde Park Corner end of Constitution Hill in London. The memorial was inaugurated in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II, the 74 names are listed on the ceiling of the small domed pavilion. There are 23 VC recipients from World War I listed,12 GC recipients from World War II, the plans for the memorial were made by the Memorial Gates Trust. The architects were Liam OConnor and Amrish Patel, funding came from the National Lottery, provided by the Millennium Commission. The company contracted to build the memorial was Geoffrey Osborne Ltd, the Memorial Gates were inaugurated on 6 November 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II with an inscription stating that this took place in the Golden Jubilee year of her reign

10.
Yoruba people
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Yoruba people are an ethnic group of Southwestern and North Central Nigeria as well as Southern and Central Benin, together known as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute over 40 million people in total, the majority of this population is from Nigeria and make up 21% of its population, according to the CIA World Factbook, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language, which is tonal, the Yoruba share borders with the Bariba to the northwest in Benin, the Nupe to the north, and the Ebira to the northeast in central Nigeria. To the east are the Edo, Ẹsan, and the Afemai groups in mid-western Nigeria, adjacent the Ebira and Edo groups are the related Igala people found in the northeast to the left bank of the Niger river. To the southwest are the Gbe speaking Mahi, Egun, Fon and Ewe who border Yoruba communities in Benin, to the southeast are Itsekiri who live in the north-west end of the Niger delta. They are ancestrally related to the Yoruba but chose to maintain a cultural identity. Significant Yoruba populations in other West African countries can be found in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia and this older group has communities in such countries as Cuba, Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, Jamaica, Brazil, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, among others. As an ethnic description, the word Yoruba was first recorded in reference to the Oyo Empire in a written by the 16th-century Songhai scholar Ahmed Baba. It was popularized by Hausa usage and ethnography written in Arabic and Ajami during the 19th century, the extension of the term to all speakers of dialects related to the language of the Oyo dates to the second half of the 19th century. It is due to the influence of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first Anglican bishop in Nigeria, Crowther was himself a Yoruba and compiled the first Yoruba dictionary as well as introducing a standard for Yoruba orthography. The number of speakers is estimated at about 30 million in 2010. Yoruba is classified within the Edekiri languages, which together with the isolate Igala, Igala and Yoruba have important historical and cultural relationships. The languages of the two ethnic groups bear such a close resemblance that researchers such as Forde and Westermann and Bryan regarded Igala as a dialect of Yoruba, the Yoruboid languages are assumed to have developed out of an undifferentiated Volta-Niger group by the 1st millennium BCE. There are three dialect areas, Northwest, Central, and Southeast. The area where North-West Yoruba is spoken corresponds to the historical Oyo Empire, south-East Yoruba was probably associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c. Central Yoruba forms an area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY. Though for a part based on the Oyo and Ibadan dialects. As of the 7th century BCE the African peoples who lived in Yorubaland were not initially known as the Yoruba, although they shared a common ethnicity, by the 8th century, a powerful Yoruba kingdom already existed in Ile-Ife, one of the earliest in Africa

11.
New Age
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The New Age is a term applied to a range of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices that developed in Western nations during the 1970s. Precise scholarly definitions of the New Age differ in their emphasis, although analytically often considered to be religious, those involved in it typically prefer the designation of spiritual and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Many scholars of the subject refer to it as the New Age movement, although others contest this term, such prominent occult influences include the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as the ideas of Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. Although the exact origins of the phenomenon remain contested, it is agreed that it developed in the 1970s and it expanded and grew largely in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular within the United States. By the start of the 21st century, the term New Age was increasingly rejected within this milieu, despite its highly eclectic nature, a number of beliefs commonly found within the New Age have been identified. Theologically, the New Age typically adopts a belief in a form of divinity which imbues all of the universe. There is thus a strong emphasis on the authority of the self. This is accompanied by a belief in a wide variety of semi-divine non-human entities, such as angels and masters, with whom humans can communicate. There is also a focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine. Those involved in the New Age have been primarily from middle, the New Age has generated criticism from established Christian organisations as well as modern Pagan and indigenous communities. From the 1990s onward, the New Age became the subject of research by scholars of religious studies. The New Age phenomenon has proved difficult to define, with much scholarly disagreement as to its scope, the scholars Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus have even suggested that it remains among the most disputed of categories in the study of religion. According to Hammer, this New Age was a fluid and fuzzy cultic milieu and he thus argued against the idea that the New Age could be considered a unified ideology or Weltanschauung, although he believed that it could be considered a more of less unified movement. Conversely, various scholars have suggested that the New Age is insufficiently homogenous to be regarded as a singular movement. There is no authority within the New Age phenomenon that can determine what counts as New Age. Many of those groups and individuals who could analytically be categorised as part of the New Age reject the term New Age in reference to themselves, some even express active hostility to the term. Rather than terming themselves New Agers, those involved in this milieu commonly describe themselves as spiritual seekers, other figures have argued that the sheer diversity of the New Age renders it too problematic for such use. In discussing the New Age, academics have varyingly referred to New Age spirituality and those involved in the New Age rarely consider it to be religion—negatively associating that term solely with organized religion—and instead describe their practices as spirituality

García Márquez billboard in Aracataca: "I feel Latin American from whatever country, but I have never renounced the nostalgia of my homeland: Aracataca, to which I returned one day and discovered that between reality and nostalgia was the raw material for my work".—Gabriel García Márquez

London Borough of Southwark Blue Plaque awarded to famous motorbike designer Edward Turner unveiled in 2009 at his former residence, 8 Philip Walk, Peckham. Turner had run a motorbike shop, Chepstow Motors on Peckham High Street.

Denys Lasdun's building for the National Theatre – an "urban landscape" of interlocking terraces responding to the site at King's Reach on the River Thames to exploit views of St Paul's Cathedral and Somerset House.